via mal contends -
Madison, Wisconsin - Keith Roberts awaits the decision of his appeal before a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit as he sits in a federal prison in Minnesota because the United States government said he did not tell the truth about his service in the Navy.

Veterans are assumed under the Veterans Judicial Review Act of 1989 to be (as they often are) in an diminished capacity to tell the full truth of the circumstances they encountered that contributed to their suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The many stressors that would lead to the granting of disability benefit payments need to be rigorously documented to the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs' (VA) satisfaction, thus the VA claims process propagated under administrative rules is non-adversarial and paternalistic for the veterans.

by Michael Leon (via mal contends)

Madison, Wisconsin —Vietnam-era Navy veteran Keith Roberts (1968-71) is an honorably discharged Navy airman who feels betrayed by his government, specifically the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the U.S. Dept of Justice, for its self-conscious and successful efforts to financially ruin and imprison him.

The Kentucky News-Enterprise has a piece this week on jailed Wisconsin veteran, Keith Roberts.

Sister takes up brother’s fight for freedom

By JOSHUA COFFMAN

RADCLIFF —Sally Harrod is crunching numbers that stretch beyond her job as an accountant. She oversees a legal fund for her brother in two legal cases regarding benefits he sought as a Navy veteran.

Keith Roberts, 60, is in a Minnesota federal prison, convicted of fraudulently receiving electronic funds from the department of Veterans Affairs. ...

Harrod, her family members and other veterans’ advocates ... fear the VA sought retribution against Roberts for seeking decades of back pay for post-traumatic stress disorder and criticizing the agency’s slow response to approve or deny his medical claims. ...

And, once it is all settled, she hopes her family can help veterans in similar situations.

“It’s unbelievable to all of them,” she said. “If they can do it to my brother, they can do it to anyone at any time.”

via MAL Contends

The House Judiciary Committee is proceeding in investigating the Bush administration's political prosecutions.

Press Release from April 17

(Washington, DC)- Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Committee Members Linda Sánchez (D-CA), Artur Davis (D-AL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) announced three critical actions in the Committee's investigation into allegations of selective or poltiically-motivated prosecution in the Justice Department.

The Members today invited Karl Rove to testify before the committee; urged the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate those allegations; and demanded that Attorney General Michael Mukasey provide additional documents on this subject.

Today's actions result from the Committee's majority staff report, also released today, which details the cases, interviews and documents they have reviewed since the Committee began its investigation last year.

Here's a reassuring bit of news. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that US Atty Stephen Biskupic stands ready to investigate any cases arising from casting votes in tommorow's presidential primary, if someone complains and the Milwaukee Co DA begs out from investigating.

Writes John Diedrich:

U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic said his prosecutors and the FBI will be available to investigate cases if citizens are dissatisfied with the response they get from the city Election Commission, police or local prosecutors.

The House of Representatives issued contempt citations for White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers Friday, eliciting howls from House Republicans intent of protecting Bush corruption.

After months of stonewalling the House Judiciary Committee, the White House refused to testify under oath and produce documents about myriad DoJ and White House scandals, essentially flipping off Congress and the American people, bringing about the contempt citations.

Writes Scott Horton at Harper’s Magazine:

(T)he White House took the position that the scope of examination would be narrowly tailored so as to exclude precisely the subject matter of the inquiry: Did White House staffers interfere with prosecutors for partisan political reasons?

Harper's magazine remains the best watchdog of the U.S. Dept of Justice corruption.

From Scott Horton's column today blasting U.S. Atty Biskupic:

Compensating the Victims

The Bush Justice Department has engaged in a number of blatantly political prosecutions. One was already ascertained in an internal probe. My understanding is that a pending Inspector General investigation has reached the same conclusion in another case in which it confirmed Karl Rove’s intervention and involvement, and that it is looking at several more. And one of them was ascertained by a Court of Appeals decision, by a unanimous, all-Republican panel of the Seventh Circuit, which in fact labeled a prosecution, which produced a conviction and was before them on appeal, with a stinging one-word rebuke. They called it “preposterous.”

The Appeals judges ordered the immediate release of the prisoner after hearing the case, not even waiting for the issuance of an opinion. This was the case of Georgia Thompson, a Wisconsin civil servant, who was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee with the evident purpose of helping the Republican candidate for governor get a leg up during the election. Moreover, the U.S. Attorney had previously been on Karl Rove’s list of prosecutors to fire, and after this and some other highly suspect cases, his name disappeared off the list. The facts speak for themselves, a lawyer might say.

Why should Wisconsin citizens get stuck with the $200,000 tab paid to an innocent Wisconsin woman who was the victim of a political prosecution by the United States Dept of Justice?

State Representative Pedro Colon (D-Milwaukee) says the federal government should foot the bill, not Wisconsin taxpayers.

United States Attorney Stephen Biskupic was excoriated by the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit last year in an extraordinary decision that freed the innocent state worker, Georgia Thompson.

From the Associated Press:

MADISON,Wis. (AP) -- A lawmaker wants the state to force the federal government to reimburse an employee who was wrongly convicted in federal court.

For my money, Bill Lueders and John Nichols are the two best political writers living in Wisconsin.

But I was stunned to read Lueders’ piece, “In Defense of Annette Ziegler,” in which Lueders calls Nichols’ criticism of Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler’s admitted conflicts of interests “way overblown,” “unfair,” and motivated by hostility toward Ziegler’s “ideology.”

Lueders’ acknowledges “… Ziegler was wrong to preside over cases in which she had an undisclosed personal connection to one of the parties. Her poor judgment was exacerbated by her initial refusal to admit she'd done anything wrong. …”

Wrong? A more apt description of Ziegler’s judicial misconduct is appalling, and contrary to settled law and ethical rules that specifically call for judges to avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety to promote public confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary.

Lueders knows better than most the violence that can be inflicted upon citizens by officials at all levels of law enforcement and the judiciary in civil and criminal litigation.

From Nichols at The Nation:

Three senior members of the House Judiciary Committee have called for the immediate opening of impeachment hearings for Vice President Richard Cheney.

Democrats Robert Wexler of Florida, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin on Friday distributed a statement, "A Case for Hearings," that declares, "The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our constitution. The charges against Vice President Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens."